[Tracy Sklenar]

Hi!

We missed you this weekend!! Next time we will figure out a way for you to come 🙂

She did really well on the wobble board! Yay!

Before you add noise, I think on these shaping games, you can add in more arousal in the form of more tugging before, after, and between the cookies 🙂 She is doing well with her body awareness so adding the arousal will help her understand how to do it when she is more aroused 🙂 Plus, I think she will think it is more fun LOL! So basically you can get her really high and excited with tugging, then let her offer on the wobble board for a few cookie rewards, then back to tugging. If she struggles at all with the added aroma (like loses her balance) then you can add in more stability to the wobble board (like putting towels under it) so that she remains in high arousal but has more body control in the moment.

Then when she is more aroused, you can add in the noise – and the arousal will help her not even hear the noise 🙂

Looking at the backing up video – she is doing tis really nicely too! She seemed to resisting the temptation to “hoist” her hind end up onto the board, and was inserted working it foot-by-foot, step-by-step, which is what we want 🙂 So… same idea as above: add more tugging before, after, and between cookies 🙂 That will challenge her to be able to do that same great form in higher arousal, which will translate to better hind end use in the trial ring when she will undoubtedly be in higher arousal 🙂

The prop game for the parallel path is also looking good! She is ever-so-slightly better when she in on your left side (in terms of the coordinated prop touches while moving), so she is probably a bit of a righty. When she was on your right, she was committing to the line of the prop but not quite hitting it as well as when she was on your left. That probably indicates a tiny side preference, which is fine – it is very subtle! So when she is on your left, you can be a bit further away. When she is in your right, stay a bit closer for now so she doesn’t have to press any added distance.

You also can drop the click now and use your ‘find it’ marker, which will really help ensure that she doesn’t look at you at all and keeps her eyes on the line.

And since she did so well here too… onwards to working this in higher arousal with toys too!

She was snappy and crisp and fast in the countermotion game – really nice! The toy play helps this skill a lot by raising arousal 🙂

And remember that you can reward for the “almost” moment. For example, at :48 she *almost* hit the prop – you can reward the effort of that and get a little closer on the next rep (that was the only rep in that session where she really was not looking at you when she started – it was like something caught her attention for a heartbeat). When you didn’t reward, she did go hit the prop again but then turned the ‘wrong’ way (away from you, to the right). It was good to reward that but rewarding the rep before it will get her to turn the correct way.

The rest of the session was strong! As you went along in the 2nd half of the session, you did less of that ready dance and more of the send following the toy release… and her responses were faster and more accurate following the ready dance. So definitely keep that ready dance in because it gets her primed to drive away from you with as much speed as she drives towards you 🙂

Turn and Burn – her commitment is looking really strong and you made very fast progress around the barrel here! She definitely loves the chase element as you mentioned – in the early turns and burn reps, she was slower going to the barrel, looking around a bit. But as the session continued and she realized that you were going to run the other way: she started heading to the barrel faster and faster (and with less looking around), possibly because heading to the barrel was predicting the chase-da-momma game which is very exciting!
Towards the end she had a little trouble fuzz-in-mouth-drama LOL and then lost her train of thought – it is possible that the session was just a tiny bit too long and she had trouble maintaining that level of focus in arousal – so you can do two things:

– Time the sessions to 2 minutes or less so she doesn’t get tired

– Add in leaving earlier and earlier (doing the FC and running the other way), just as she is arriving at the barrel 🙂 That will be SUPER fun because she will drive to the barrel faster to get on with the chase game exit 🙂

Great job! Let me know what you think!
Tracy

[Tracy Sklenar]

Hi!

She is doing well here too – as she gets more stimulated, she if shifting her weight to her shoulders and hoisting her hind end up to smack it down on the bed LOL It is adorable! But she is losing form of backing up as she gets more excited. In normal sport-mix style, she is working how how to go REALLY FAST without maintaining the form we want LOL!!!

So this goes back to your question about the toys… we can use her fabulous toy drive to help her learn to go fast AND maintain form, which is so important! For this game: replace the cookies with the toy, and you can use a release for tugging from your hands (between your feet) as the reward and reset for the next rep, or you can toss the toy to her if she will bring it to you to tug (I believe she will).

To start, go with the toy in your hands and REALLY close to the bed: we are ultra-stimulating her so we want to make form easy (just one step backwards) because internal state is much harder. The goal of the session is not to add distance, but to get her more stimulated and maintain the good form 🙂

Over the course of several sessions, you can add more distance but keep an eye on form: if she goes to the hoisting of her rear rather than the stepping back with her rear, remove some of the distance so she can maintain good form.

Great job on all of these! It is really cool that we can start working in higher arousal states at this early point in her training!!!!!!

Tracy

[Tracy Sklenar]

Looking at the plankrobatics. She is happy to get up there, happy to leap off it, and definitely improving with turning in a circle. So thinking about your toy question above: you can do this with a toy! Hop on – release to hop off to tug. You use a hand cue to help her turn around – release to hop off to tug. This helps her learn to be coordinated and thoughtful about her body even in moments f higher stimulation.
This will going to have more power from her, so you will want to stabilize the board so she doesn’t push it or have it slip out from under her or scare herself. You can switch to a longer, heavier board that is less likely to move, if you have access to one!

T

[Tracy Sklenar]

About the tugging – you can add it to games that would be normally food based (like the goat games) and also we can add it to the resilience games. That helps her build her self-regulation of going from high arousal to optimal arousal. That is critical for all dogs! So on the resilience game I posted this week, you can start with food but you can also replace the food with two toys and a ‘you can have the toy in my hand’ marker 🙂

T

[Tracy Sklenar]

Good morning!

Nice goat games happening here! She seems super confident here so we can try different things. A couple of ideas for you:

You had her approach the same way, every time. Have her switch up which direction she approaches the ‘thing’ from so she practices that coordination of approach from all the different directions. If she is waiting on a bed or something, you can use a cookie toss to move her to a different starting point, or you can move your position so she approaches it from a different side and different angle each time.

So the next challenge: using relatively stable objects, try the goat games with a toy only 🙂 Can she be coordinated when she is in a higher state of arousal?

And you can also string together a series of these objects into a goat game safari where she walks over them all in a row 🙂

Onwards to the next video:

[Tracy Sklenar]

Good morning!

Cone wrapping is looking really good! The next steps is going to be her wrapping the cone while you stand up, so you can start the session with you sitting like you did, then after a couple of reps you can move to standing up.

When she is in these shaping games, be very quiet while she is offering and let her self-start and offer. The more you talk to her, the more she looks at you and we don’t want to build in looking at you for these commitment games. It is confusing if we talk to the dogs a lot in these games: “where do I look, mom? At you or at the cone?” So if she gets stuck, be quiet and let her try to unstuck herself 🙂 And if she can’t un-stick herself, you can move the cone in closer or sit down again. You can talk to her during all the play breaks because that is where we want her to happily look at you and engage with you.

Backing up is going well and she is doing it FAST!! She did well when the board didn’t move and then also when the board moved. I think she was surprised that the board moved, because she had just done a session on that board where it didn’t move. So you can make a more gradual transition to the movement of the board by stuffing a bunch of towels under it, so it moves a tiny bit rather than a whole lot as you go from the stationary board to the moving board. At the end of the 2nd video, you had moved one step away to get more backing up steps and that is great- you can keep adding a step or so each time you train this, to build up the distance, Add it gradually so she doesn’t lose her form 🙂

You might notice that she was looking up at your hands a lot during the backing up sessions, which slows down the backing up offering: It was because you were a little late getting the cookies to her, so she was watching you get the reward out of your pocket.
So have multiple cookies in your hands so you are not having to go into your pocket to get it. What is happening is that she is doing it, you click really well and then you get the cookie out of the pocket so she is lifting her head to watch that happen. And since everything between the click and the reward presentation gets reinforced, she is building in that head lift and watch your hands. That can actually reduce the backing up because it is hard to back up with the head high – so if you have 3 or 4 cookies in your hand already you can click and get the cookie in really fast, so she doesn’t look up. Then when your hand is empty, break off for a tug break and reload the cookie hand 🙂

>>On our parallel path – we are having a hard time with her watching me. Any suggestions there?>>

She definitely has value for the prop, so the looking at you was a product of reward timing and placement.

A couple of ideas:

– mark and toss the reward sooner: when you see her locked onto the prop and just about getting to it, click and throw the reward really fast and out ahead of her. You are clicking her commitment to it, rather than waiting to see actual arrival.

– You can also use a verbal ‘ get it’ marker instead of the click, which might be better than a click for two reasons: first, a click tends to get the dogs whipping their eyes around to look at us. And second, the get it marker tells her that you are tossing the treat ahead and the click does not give her that information.

– have several treats in your hands (both hands, ideally, which is another reason to not use the clicker – more hand space for treats!). That way you can mark and toss fast without having to reach into your pocket. You had your hand either moving to your pocket or already in your pocket here, so she is watching the hand-in-pocket action for the same reasons she was watching it during the backing up sessions (the timing of reward gets late when the cookies are not in your hand, so the looking at your hands & pockets gets built in).

This prop game is a great way to help the dogs learn to NOT look at us (and a good way to practice handler mechanics so the dogs don’t look at us :))

>>I just could not engage my brain for the send to prop & move away. I clicked as I was moving instead of when she got to the prop.>>

The countermotion is really hard for us humans!!!! Definitely don’t use the clicker – it is one more thing you have to coordinate and it isn’t necessary for this. So you can just use a marker and a cookie or toy in your hand, and very slow movement away for the countermotion.

Great job! Let me know what you think!
Tracy

[Tracy Sklenar]

Her sending is looking really good!! Great job with the verbal energy of the ready dance moment before the send, to help her understand the switch from handler focus to obstacle focus.

You can make the object even more salient by having it a little lifted, maybe attach it to a book or a small box, to add height to it. She could see it here, but as we add more motion we want to make it easier to see so she can easily process the object and the motion.

She did really well sending, I think her only questions where when you are accidentally on the prop at :26 and the right at the end when you were sending her backwards – she froze for a moment then offered the behavior. That is pretty normal at this stage – I couldn’t see your face, so just be sure you are looking at the prop and not at her cute face 🙂 I think one more session of these sideways and backwards sends will set her up nicely to move to the countermotion game we added this week.

Blind cross video:
She did a marvelous job of going from cookies to toy in terms of switching value & type of reinforcement. I think the hardest part was that she might have been doing it too fast, and was coughing up a cookie. So you can wait til you see her get the cookie and open her mouth (usually a sign of swallowing) and then you can start the running away for the cross element of the game.
In the 2nd video, she was not coughing up the cookie so things moved faster which is GREAT – she did a great job switching focus on the 2 tasks here (get the cookie, follow the momma) and that sets up a great foundation for all of the task switching we need in sports 🙂

In these sessions, you were doing front crosses with your feet rotating towards her – it is a valuable cross to rehearse for sure! So on the next session, you can change to the blinds to rehearse those too. For the blinds, your feet can be moving towards the camera the whole time as you look behind you to see her over one shoulder then disconnect by looking forward for a tiny heartbeat moment… then look behind you to see her over the other shoulder.

That disconnect moment is NOT comfortable for us humans 🙂 as we work with the puppies, so keep reminding yourself to look forward away from her for that heartbeat before looking back for her on the other side of you. It is that switch in eye contact from one side to the other that cues the blind cross side change for her.

Great job!! Let me know what you think!
Tracy

[Tracy Sklenar]

Good morning!

>>Ha! Still working on that! Seems like all of the progress that we had made on her start line has disappeared since pregnancy. The first few times we trialed, not so bad. The last 2 – horrible. Going to UKI next weekend and the plan is train, train, train! To be truthful, there have not been a lot of rules in her life since pregnancy and she needs consistent boundaries. And I think having another dog added to the pack and training , even though it is her pup, has been an adjustment for her.
>>

Yes, pregnancy and puppy rearing is probably hard on the body and brain, so it might take her a while to get back into the sport groove and that is fine! Lots of rewards and fun times will help.

And yes, I agree that adding another dog to the pack does require an adjustment period.

>>The humping did come during a high energy play session. Yes, I do need and will start bringing them each outdoors by themselves for play and training. It used to be Tchoup that I worried about hurting him in play, but with the frisbee Roulez goes off the chain>>

So since we know that arousal regulation is a key component that train early on, it sounds like the humping was a high arousal moment where he didn’t know how to self-regulate because he is so young. At this stage and through adolescence, the best thing is to just not have him in situations like that where he is not the sole focus. If he is in a stimulating situation, it can be all about him and then you can help him with the arousal regulation. Otherwise, he can’t regulate, does something like humping and might end up in a time out which can be very frustrating for a puppy. So, we help the baby dogs or we play with the adults separately (which the adults appreciate a LOT lol!!)

On the parallel path, you can do more back and forth. You don’t need to always start one direction. That can get more reps in on both sides of you so he works both sides.

For the parallel path, you will get more clarity of hits with food rewards – the toy might be a little too stimulating as the thrown reward, because he is a looking up at it a little bit rather than to the prop. So you can toss the cheese as the reward then go back and forth after the cheese toss, breaking out some toy play after every 2 or 3 cookie tosses. When he has more experience with the parallel path game, you will be able to go back to the toy reward.

The sending game looked strong! Remember to walk away as you add the countermotion, and not run away (everyone wants to run, we all ned to be on Team Chill hahaha). When you ran away, he was anticipating that and the hitting of the prop was diminishing. If you are walking the whole time, he will be able to commit to the prop better – then we will build it up to running over time. Motion is distracting!

Also, let’s quiet the environment: when you are moving on your line past the prop, be quiet 🙂 Your verbal excitement can come during the tugging breaks 🙂 And also, he will do better if he learns this without the barking dog (Roulez?) nearby. You can see at the beginning in particular that the barking splits his focus and he had a harder time doing the game. Plus, she barks when YOU get excited, so he doesn’t get a chance to learn that the verbal praise is a good thing because it predicts frustration barking.

By comparison – in the wobble session, no barking and you were relatively quiet while he was offering – and he was able to offer immediately!! Perfect! He didn’t have to split his attention. Looked great!!!

>>I really ha to work hard to get him to tug after using cheese but I used cheese (higher value treat) >>

Yes, the cheese made a big impact on him in a VERY good way! But that is good, it was a very smart training move!
And yes, it is harder to get back on the toy when he is surrounded by the cheese smell, so you can use motion to your advantage there: it was a great long toy, so you can run around dragging it so he chases it – that can really match the value of the cheese! And tugging on the wobble board at the end was great too, you did it in flow of the game and he looked like he was having a great time!!!

Great job here! Let me know what you think!
Tracy

[Tracy Sklenar]

Good morning!

Wow, she is offering that wrap at a pretty significant distance! Impressive!!! All of this will really build to amazing commitment on course. Good girlie!!!

You found the edge of the ‘bubble’ when she stopped offering for a heartbeat (“mom, I forgot what I was doing” hahaha”. The edge of the bubble is the distance where she is not as comfortable moving ahead of you. That happened twice, and both times she was able to get back to wrapping which is really impressive resilience!

Upcoming games will help expand the bubble even more, so for now the best next step is to move to the turn and burn game that we added on Wednesday. That game involves you starting close to the wing again because it adds in a send and doesn’t use the targets – but she will be fine with that and we will eb able to move you away again.

Great job! Let me know what you think!
Tracy

[Tracy Sklenar]

Hi!

Good session here! I think she is really getting the idea! She moves. Really quickly, which means we need to speed up the mechanics a bit. A couple of mechanics ideas:

Try to have 2 cookies ready in your hand: one to drop between your feet, and the other to throw for the backing up. Then after you toss a cookie for backing up, you can reload 2 more cookies into your hand and do the next rep.

What was happening was that as she was backing up, you were plucking the next cookie and you were standing up a bit, which delayed the delivery slightly and lifted her head high, which changes her mechanics and reduces the backing up a bit.

That would mean it would be helpful to have you remain bent over… which might make your back really angry 🙂 So you can sit in a chair as long as she has enough room to get the treat from between your feet 🙂 That way you don’t have to go up and down, you can just rest your elbows on your thighs and toss treats around.

>>Then I put a sanded board down and she struggled with backing up on that. I moved a little closer and just had her back up with her front paws onto the board which worked and then tried a bit with her hind feet. I think she thinks the behavior with the board is to turn around and come over it again.>>

Totally agree that she seemed confused about offering backing up or getting on the plank and doing plank games. She raises a valid point LOL!! So, try this next time on a low, large dog bed – it should be large enough for her to stand on with all 4 feet and low enough that it is easy for her to step back on. Start with all 4 feet and lure just her 2 front feet off… then let her offer backing her two front feet back on it! Then we can progress to having her back feet come off too, then have her back up onto it with back feet.

>>Finally, in watching the video I think I am supposed to be quiet other than the marker word when shaping. >>

Yes, ideally you just mark and then toss the treat if she is meant to continue offering or looping into the next rep. If you are praising, she is likely to look at you and stop offering. So you can praise during the tug breaks!

Nice work!! Let me know what you think!
Tracy

[Tracy Sklenar]

Hi! Just checking in really quick – I am offline this weekend for the most part, teaching the Brain Camp in North Carolina. I will look at these fully when I get back on Monday. Sorry for the delay!
Tracy

[Tracy Sklenar]

Oh dear, 10 inches of snow!!!! But I totally agree – she is SUPER FUN!!! I am enjoying watching you two 🙂

>> I haven’t been wearing a treat bag or a training apron but what are your thoughts on that? I wonder if it would help me be quicker getting treats for her.>>

Part of the fast cookie action is having them accessible, so a treat pouch or apron can help! But choose the most subtle thing, so it is easier to fade the visual in the future.

T

[Tracy Sklenar]

Hi!

>>
I love Audubon and I have to remember he is not Roulez. i.e., she would not be distracted by other items lying in the area.Almost a little freaky how focused she has always been. Not that it’s bad with Audubon, only different.>>

I think what you are seeing is that she is in a different arousal than he is, in this early stage of development. While the higher arousal brought you that high focus in the early stages, you also had to learn how to help her manage that high arousal when she was really aroused. He is pretty normal in that things in the environment are distracting, so you will find that he is probably going to be easier to teach to manage his arousal 🙂

>>While Roulez was waiting for me to throw the frisbee this afternoon, Audie mounted her and started humping her. She was so focused on me, she totally ignored him. I took him off of her. When he did it again, I placed him in crate. Should I have done something differently?>>

Was this during a high energy play session with running and stuff? He probably just needed to be redirected to something where he could run around and and burn off some energy, separately from Roulez. The humping is no biggie, so you can just redirect him or have him come out for his own high energy play session. At his age and size, you probably don’t want him loose when Roulez is chasing frisbees, because he doesn’t know how to manage himself yet and we want to help him.

Turn and Burn:
This is going really well!!! Yes, totally a righty 🙂 Try to face the barrel when you send and use your leg too, to step to it. And remember to be patient – let him finish the job more before you turn and run away. When you were patient and quiet? Perfect! When you were too early or too chatty? He had questions. For example, at :50 you tried to run away way too soon and so he didn’t finish the wrap and didn’t get rewarded. You can reward his effort, reset, and try again.
At 2:10 you cheered and tried to leave too early, but you rewarded anyway and that was correct 🙂

Also, you can hold his collar but just let go when yo bar ready and don’t pull him forward by his collar 🙂 When he was on your right and turning to his left, you were pulling him forward towards the barrel a bit, which creates a bit of opposition reflex so it is harder for him to leave you.

He was great in this collection sandwich game! I want you to reward him every single time even if something is not perfect, though – this is a handling game so if something goes wrong… it is your error and not his 🙂 The main thing that was causing challenge was that you were pivoting too fast, so you were breaking connection and he didn’t know which side to be on: total handler error! So, reward like he was correct (because he was LOL!) and then slow down the pivot and add more connection.

When you were slower on the pivot and connected? He was perfect 🙂 And he did a great job alternating between cookies and toys! Super!!! And I am already seeing a pretty massive improvement in his ability to pluck the cookie off the ground and return engagement to you!!

Great job! Let me know what you think!
Tracy

[Tracy Sklenar]

Hi!

>>this is the first thing I’ve done in about a week and now I”m feeling pressure, LOL!>>

Ha! No pressure! Some weeks we can train every day… some weeks we train nothing at all. It is all good 🙂


>>I already taught Hola backing up using the method where her hind feet are on a mat, I’m fairly close and put a treat by my feet that she eats and then backs back up to her mat with me eventually moving farther and farther away. It worked great for her. >>

Perfect! So you can skip to the advanced level of the game we added this week, where we add motion to the thing she is backing up to – like a low inflatable disc, or a wobble board. Anything low enough for her to step back up on easily will be perfect! And since she has been a lot of different moving things, I think this will work nicely for her 🙂

>>I wanted to try one of Wednesday’s games with her so we did the Turn and Burn today since that looked like fun. >>

The session looked GREAT!!! You had a ton of success, she was super strong. My only two suggestions are:

– You can use less of a big arm movement when you send her , because that twists your body a little as you try to turn and run away. You can do a low small send, no need for your arm to go more than a foot past you body.
– You can use a longer toy, maybe with a big something at the end, to direct her focus away from you hands a bit – the smaller toy was getting her to grab it near your hand and there was a big ouch moment for you.

>>Now I’m sitting here at my computer with ice on my hip because I pulled a muscle when reaching the toy across my body, ugh.

Oh nooooo! Ouch!!!! I think smaller arm movements and the long toy will have you twisting less, which should keep your hip happier.


>>I hope we did this game right and not sure if we got to the advanced stage or not.

You nailed it! You can keep moving your line so you can start running away earlier and earlier.

>>I think I was too close to the popup barrel at first

Nope, you were good!

>> and I think I’m too slow leaving.

You can leave earlier and earlier – I think the big arm send was making you feel like it was harder to leave early, because you kind of had to unravel the send arm because you could run the other way.

>> I was using the word “push” but is that a wrap cue?

It can be if you want it to be! Many people use it as a backside cue.

>>Do you use a different word for wrap left vs wrap right?

Yes 🙂

>>I’d like to know some of your suggested wrap cue words.

I vote for anything that is short, lots of consonants, and easy to repeat fast: checkcheckcheck or digdigdigdig are two very popular ones! I use noises (choochooochoo and tsstsstss)because they are quiet and keep me from yelling the wrap cues LOL!

>> Can you tell any right or left turn preference after watching her on this video?

She looked super balanced in both directions! I couldn’t see a preference.
She looked great!

Great job here! Hope your hip is happy tomorrow!!!
Tracy

[Tracy Sklenar]

Hi!

>>And the Trash hat is looking a bit less trashy.

Ha! I love that Trash Hat!

Because the struggle is particular (and real!) to me, is the “Nose to Target”, the white-target in handler’s hand to be used anywhere else besides the hand?

Nope! This game never has the target leave the hand 🙂

>> Or is this basically a nose to hand-Target and the ‘white thing’ fades away?>>

Yes and it gets built in a SUPER FANCY handling move that we start very soon 🙂 Stay tuned!

Tracy

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